O’Keefe: More NPR videos are on the way; Update: Obama still committed to funding NPR; Update: PBS says it met with O’Keefe’s fake donors too

posted at 5:33 pm on March 9, 2011 by Allahpundit

Not the first time he’s sprung this trap on one of his targets. Remember when video of the first ACORN prostitution sting came out, and everyone assumed that it was an isolated incident — until footage taken at offices in other cities started rolling off the assembly line?

My first assumption when I read this was that he must have more footage of Ron Schiller. But if so, it would have to have come from a second meeting: Remember, O’Keefe’s already released the full two-hour video of the conversation everyone saw yesterday. So either Schiller doubled down later or … other NPR employees spouted off at other meetings? Hmmmmm.

“We’re not done releasing footage,” O’Keefe told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Tuesday. “We have more investigative material that we’re going to release.

“I’m not really going to comment on it yet, but I think it will be very interesting to see what happens with this story as it develops,” he promised…

Asked to elaborate on the additional revelations he plans, O’Keefe confirmed the additional disclosures involve NPR, but would not say whether they stem from the same meeting involving Schiller and Liley.

“But stay tuned, and you’ll see,” he told Newsmax. “I want to see if NPR tells the truth about what is going on. I want to see how they tell the truth, and then we’re going to release more information. So we’ll see what happens.”

Liberals were grousing this morning on Twitter that NPR was too quick to toss Vivian Schiller under the bus, but in light of what O’Keefe’s saying, I wonder if NPR already knows that the problem is bigger than the public realizes. Could be that other employees, after watching the video, came forward yesterday and told management, “I recognize them, they suckered me too,” which would send the board of directors into serious damage control mode. By pushing out Vivian Schiller, they blunt the fallout from future videos by being able to say they’ve already taken draconian steps to address the problem, etc. Just a theory, but it would explain the quick axe-ing.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s Juan Williams on Hannity last night grinding the two Schillers’ faces in this. His theory for why Vivian had to go is the same as the one offered today by NPR’s ombudsman in an online chat — namely, that after l’affaire Williams and her offhand comments about him talking to a therapist and now this, the employees there were simply tired of being embarrassed.

“Everyone agrees that we need to cut spending. The president put forward a budget that does that in dramatic fashion,” Carney said. “We also — that budget also contains within it the president’s priorities, and we’re working with Congress to find common ground, as you know, on the broader budget issues. But we believe that — or rather, we do not support calls to eliminate funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as is evidenced by our budget.”

B-b-b-b-but how will NPR survive without government dough? Read this excellent Michael Barone piece for an answer. (Or this VDH post, making the same point.) It’ll survive the same way the National Trust for Historic Preservation survived after it weaned itself off federal funding in the 90s — through user donations, which will free it up to pursue any agenda it likes without political pressure. The NTHP has thrived ever since, and NPR, which is a much bigger deal on the left, will thrive too. Full speed ahead, Eric Cantor!

Anne Bentley, a PBS spokeswoman, said PBS’ senior vice president for development, Brian Reddington, attended a lunch with the fake donors in February. She said she had “no sense at all” of whether Mr. Reddington was taped during that lunch; when asked if PBS was concerned about a possible tape surfacing, she declined to comment.

Ms. Bentley said that Mr. Reddington came back from the lunch with “profound concerns about the organization” and began what she called a routine vetting process “when there is an appearance of a conflict of interest and to ensure they meet requirements of transparency and openness.”

Bentley says PBS broke off communication with the group when they couldn’t verify its existence.